Weller's War

by George Weller

  One beardless boy had both his legs blown off and was bleeding to death. The major leaned down and said: “You're a Gurkha, aren't you? What about a smile?” The boy just got a Gurkha smile going, but died before it was fully upon his face.

  After falling back, the Gurkhas fought the rest of the campaign without gear. Their lorries, munitions and stores were gone. They had only machine guns and rifles. They depended on the Chinese for food, “and the Chinese never let us down.”

  One thing that astonished them was the minuteness with which the Japanese fighters pursued them. A single Army 97 would come down from as high as 5000 feet to kill a single man on an open stretch of road. Twice they fought for three days without getting any food of any kind, and the airplanes never left. The major said: “It wouldn't be so bad if they just machine-gunned and bombed us while we're eating and sleeping and trying to prepare positions. What I object to is their coming down to look at my maps and study my orders over my shoulder.” The Japanese maintained a continuous flagellation over one Gurkha encampment for thirty hours.

  There were never any boats to cross rivers on, and the bridges had long since been blown up on the withdrawal of the main body of troops. “It seemed as though we swam our way southward almost as much as we walked.” Through 150 miles of Kedah and another 200 of Perak, from Ipoh halfway to Kuala Lumpur, the Gurkhas fought their little-known, never celebrated rear-guard defense. Their most terrible ordeal awaited them in the middle of Malaya. They pitched their camp south of the Slim River, in a hairpin curve where a rubber estate was three-quarters encircled by a loop in the main highway. Japanese planes hugging the tops of the trees kept them under observation. The machine-gun fire from overhead had been slackening, and the colonel in charge took this as a sign that no attack was imminent. Other troops still held with Bren-gun carriers the road on the north side of the river. By now the Gurkhas were so accustomed to being machine-gunned by planes all day that any pause seemed a vacation. Men and officers sprawled out for a delicious hour of rest.

  Then someone heard the rattling of tanks on the highway.

  “Sounds like Bren-gun carriers coming up,” said one officer.

  But he was wrong. It was eight Japanese tanks coming down. They had pierced the road block north of the river, run across the unblown bridge, and with the aircraft to guide them were now sent to annihilate the Gurkha headquarters.

  They took their time. They ran tanks halfway around the loop, then shifted the turrets round to aiming positions. Not bothering to be evasive, they called out an occasional “Banzai!” They even delayed long enough to hang a Rising Sun flag on the lead tank. These formalities having been carried out in the best taste of bushido, they fired shells through the unprotected rubber. English officers and Gurkhas were caught. All they could do was lie behind trees barely ten inches in diameter. As the men crawled, it was like shooting rabbits at 100 yards. Occasionally the Japanese amused themselves by machine-gun fire. Finally they decided the job was finished, and started out of their tanks. Suddenly a grenade whizzed, and exploded against a tank. The Japs hastily jumped in, and resumed fire. More trees were smashed to bits. The wounded and dying lay on all sides. Nine more Jap tanks arrived and joined in.

  After a while some tanks went on southward. There was nothing to stop their going on to Singapore except the selfless bravery of an ordinary sergeant-major of an artillery battery in the rear. On his own initiative he had a single 18-pounder dragged out to the middle of the road, in full fire of the Japanese force, and stood by his breech. He stopped the tanks, and paid for doing so by his life. The captain of the artillery battery, who had his left arm entirely shot off and three fingers of his right hand shot away as well as a bullet through his right leg, somehow got out a revolver, crept forward, and killed two Japs who attempted to emerge from their tanks. Finally the advance tank force turned back, returning to the grove of death where the Gurkhas lay, for more sport. For ninety minutes all seventeen tanks turned their full fire upon the grove where the Gurkhas crawled amid their dead and dying. Both colonels were killed. But the Japanese never did compel a surrender, and never dared emerge from their steel caissons to face the Gurkhas' grenades. Their tank force, Rising Sun flag and all, withdrew again north of the river.

  “We've been through something that makes Norway, Dunkirk, and Greece look like a weekend show,” said the surviving brigade major of the Gurkhas.

  The Scots, though continuously scourged by aircraft, managed to get loose occasionally. During a battle at Kuala Dipang, one of the eleven battles they fought, seventeen Japanese coolly walked into the railway station to the west. They soon were attacked by an armored car and barricaded themselves in the station. Meanwhile an Argyll captain, his company sergeant-major and orderly crept around the side. The captain had a tommy gun. He used it to beat open the door. By the time he got inside he was out of ammunition. He used it to club the Japanese over the head. There were still three Japanese hiding, somewhat ridiculously, in the ticket office. The sergeant-major, who was made of more than parade-ground stuff, burst open the ticket office and killed the three Japs who were left with his fists and his tin hat.

  THE FALL OF SINGAPORE

  For the last three weeks of its life Singapore's sky was almost never clear of smoke, sometimes thin, grey, and wan, sometimes black and overpowering. The Japanese were in the dilemma of knowing they had Singapore within their hands and being unable to decide what to preserve and what to destroy. Except for human life and the will to resist, there was not much they could destroy. The bombers left untouched the large oil reservoirs on the island of Bukum, where 40,000,000 gallons of fuel were stored, to be set aflame at night in the last hours of the fall of the city. The man with the pistol in his hand was nearly parched to death as he rowed away.

  About two weeks after the first Hurricanes were landed at the navy yard and unboxed, about thirty more Hurricanes were flown in from an aircraft-carrier on the western side of Sumatra. By this time Singapore's air fields were smashed, the Japanese were so close that the warning system no longer functioned, and the possibility of regaining control of the air had slipped beyond reach.

  A whole shipload of other RAF fighters, full of courage for the task, arrived in the last days of the siege, but were never used. Because they had no regular commanding officer and no word had been sent of their arrival, they sustained considerable casualties through being bombed at the piers.

  The withdrawal of troops across the causeway took the Japanese by surprise; apparently they expected to be fought more stiffly. The quick retirement had to be made suddenly to gain a little rest for the weary men and time to prepare. The British command counted on an interval when the Japanese would not know what ambushes were awaiting them. Washington sent word that if Singapore could hold out thirty days, help would come. Singapore did hold—for exactly thirty days.

  Single reasons are usually the offspring of simple minds, but certainly one important thing was that the coastal defense guns were not movable, could not be turned around to fire along the network of roads in the jaw of Johore. This jaw held Singapore like a bone in the mouth of a dog. Chicagonews, in the last conference before leaving the night that the causeway was to be blown, made the atmosphere in a tranquil press conference—characterized by the usual superficial questions and evasive answers—momentarily discordant by asking how many coastal guns pointed out to sea and how many pointed at the Japanese. The answer given by the army spokesman was discreet: some pointed one way, he said, and some the other.

  Were there many?

  Candidly, the spokesman could not say that there were very many.

  The able G. W. Seabridge, editor of the Straits Times, remained the one voice no one could suffocate. A month to the day before the first Japanese barges crossed the straits the paper had said: “Time after time we were told of the arrival of large convoys of troop ships, quantities of aircraft, tanks and all the other paraphernalia. Where is that immense strength? … Everybody in this cou
ntry appears to have been lulled into a sense of security by confident statements regarding our armored might. The only people who have not been bluffed are the Japanese.”

  Singapore was so big that it had a man-power problem. In spite of all the troops pulled back down the peninsula—even the Japs claimed only 5000 dead and 7800 prisoners for the 600 miles of fighting—there were not enough men on the island to fight for it. The fortress was, of all things, too big for its garrison.

  When General Percival and Lieutenant General Gordon Bennett went to inspect the lines they found companies separated by distances of one or even two miles. For a wall of men, half a million troops would have been necessary—instead there were clusters marooned on three sides by tidal waters. Among these little forces the Japanese sampans and barges could easily penetrate.

  But Yamashita was as cautious as ever; the only thing the Japanese fears is surprise. The Japs pushed their little mortars into position in the rubber groves and behind the buildings of Johore. They began throwing shells, their fire directed by aircraft and balloons. They could take fixes on the fall of their shells; and always the Japs had the abundant advantage of the thousand-eyed planes.

  The night when a 75-yard opening was blown in the causeway—whose $12 million cost had gone into making it too solid to destroy—Sir Shenton Thomas made an address on the MBC. He said: “Today we began the battle of Singapore. Before I say more, let me set your minds at rest on a most important matter. The general officer in command told you that our forces will stay here and carry out the high task of defending the island and fight on till victory is won. This is a total war in which the whole population is involved. Let not, therefore, the Asiatic population of this island imagine for one day that they will find themselves abandoned.”

  Thomas kept his promise. The Asiatic population was not abandoned. Singapore was never evacuated.

  By the time the causeway was blown, the question of evacuating the troops from Singapore was simply theoretical; the losses in bringing them to Java would have been terrible, even had the ships been available. Every vessel that went through “bomb alley” (Bangka Strait)—and every vessel had to—was severely bombed.

  The enemy landing was expected hourly. Wavell cabled MacArthur in the Philippines, offering to fly there. About this time three loaded freighters under army commission were allowed to start the perilous journey toward Corregidor, and there was some hope MacArthur could be reinforced. MacArthur's reply to Wavell was: Thanks but consider the life of the supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific is too precious to be jeopardized. He was right. Only one of the freighters got through.

  Although there were no ships to take away the troops, troops continued to arrive. The liner Empire Star brought in nearly 9000 tons of cargo, including tanks and many crates of Hurricanes. The captain remained nine days, unable to obtain orders either to unload or to leave. Finally he unloaded anyway, and left. The tanks and Hurricanes fell into Japanese hands, to be used in the battle of Java.

  But Singapore's hope did not die, and its routine went on. The littlest waiter at the Raffles, who had declined to leave even when two heavy bombs fell upon the laundry in the rear, still stood at the door in the mirrored hall after the evening tea dance, offering outgoing officers the same unpurchased yellow Teddy bears he had been offering for weeks past. Months before, perhaps, he must have sold them all and become temporarily very rich; he always seemed to believe that another day for them would come back again, inexplicably, as the first had come. When all the Chinese roomboys and the Malay waiters fled he was still there, offering them for sale. Seeing him, one wondered whether when Yamashita first came through the blackout curtains, the little porter would try to sell him a fuzzy yellow Teddy bear.

  On Friday, February 6, with Wavell already gone, Percival gave his message to the troops: “We will hold Singapore! There is no question about it. Just because we do not see so many of our aircraft overhead and large naval vessels about, it does not mean the air force and navy have abandoned Singapore.”

  There were four full raids that day between dawn and nine in the morning. By this time it was clear that the rising and falling note of the siren and the long note of the all-clear might be ignored. Singapore was under continuous air raid.

  The first shells fell upon the downtown suburbs on Saturday. The Japs had been saving this bombardment for their first attempt to cross the strait.

  In “European” villas people had begun to destroy what they had of value. The broadcasting company suddenly announced that Singapore would be held and demolition must cease. It was the same contradiction that had dominated the entire campaign; nobody knew whether the island could be held or not. If it could not be held, the task of demolition was so enormous that it had to begin immediately. But if it could be held, the task of uncrating and putting into action the materials that had arrived had to begin immediately. There was no safety in either the godowns, being bombed daily, or the air fields, over which the Japanese scouted ceaselessly.

  Yet hope was very far from dead, and spirits were high. Malta had held, and Corregidor and Bataan were holding; why should not Singapore hold too? The sight of one or two Hurricanes coming over hastily from Palembang and skipping back again raised hearts. The will to hold Singapore was there; everyone felt it.

  With the island jammed with refugees, civilian and military, and its roads clogged with vulnerable trucks and cars, shortage of food would have made the work of the Japanese much easier. But no one was going to starve Singapore out, whatever direction he came from. Food was divided into truckloads, each containing enough for a family for six months: bacon, crackers, tea, sugar, butter, corned beef, and canned milk. From these stores many who escaped in small boats laid away their provisions. At Singapore, unlike Corregidor, there was food for years of siege.

  Every villa was crowded. Most roomer-boarders were strangers to each other and only vaguely known to their hosts. One Singapore hostess who found herself with eleven house guests put up a sign which met this emergency in etiquette well. “Do not imagine it is necessary to appear,” it read, “except at meals.” This left her unsatisfied. She attached a postscript: “And do not be excessively polite.”

  Hopes as grotesque as gargoyles roamed the streets. The cruelest rumor was that Wavell had landed at Penang heading a fleet of American warships. A British and American column had jumped on the beach from the accompanying convoy, the tale went, severed Japanese communications in mid-Malaya, and was racing south to relieve Singapore. The tragic thing about such hopes was that they were not feather-bed escapism, but indicated an honest, optimistic frame of mind. There was a spirit here which could have been used—had weapons been available, had the people's army been mustered.

  There was no more withdrawal possible; everyone in the island knew that. In the past weeks those voices at the Singapore Club which spoke with premonition of what “the Asiatic population” would do were now ready to give tribute to its self-decision and dedicated spirit. Something like comradeship came to Singapore.

  Asiatics had no illusions about the inadequacy of the protection given them. Where they were unorganized, they were fearful and ran for shelter in the deep culverts. But where they were organized, whether to withdraw the wounded from the rubble of a fallen building or to fight fires, they did their work to the end with full gallantry. And the Cricket Club and the Singapore Club boasted about their boys that all were “magnificent.”

  But it was too late even to be magnificent.

  After the first spasm of indignation passed in the London press, Churchill asked for and received the vote of confidence necessary to carry his government over the coming fall of Singapore. Even in Singapore itself there was evidence of that effort to understand faraway difficulties which is one of the most admirable things in the British character. There was none of the bitterness that might have been expected. Singapore had been strong, and perhaps it still was. Perhaps Singapore could hold. The Straits Times still did not demand the
resignation of Churchill or his Cabinet. Far from bellowing at the head of the pack, Singapore hung in the rear, waiting and hoping for London to do something, realizing that London and Washington, once so near and so big, were now small and far away.

  As Singapore began its death watch, the lull that follows recrimination and regret spread over the watching world. Nothing more could be accomplished by criticism. Did London and Washington realize what was happening?

  Chicagonews remained until all other American special correspondents of both newspapers and radio had left. Two American agency men, Yates McDaniel of the AP and Harold Guard of the UP, stayed behind and sent the best accounts of the battle. One or two British and Australian correspondents remained, departing at ragged intervals past the point where intensive shelling began. The military bureau of press relations departed the day before Chicagonews, leaving the trusty Steel in charge of final withdrawals. Among the unrecorded losses was a huge bookkeeper's typewriter which Chicagonews had personally looted from an empty barracks south of Ipoh and brought back for the use of Major Fisher and Captain Hooper.

  The office in the Cathay building was deserted, where Chicagonews had flattened out on the floor and crawled to the inner rooms when the bombs came down upon Fort Canning and Orchard Road. Here he had crept to the window and peeped mousily over the sill to see the big brown rolling clouds of bomb dust rising from the buildings, and the tiny red brushwork of the newborn flames reaching up. Secure behind the masonry and knowing that the planes had passed, he had looked out the window and seen a Chinese fire warden standing on a roof while the smoke and yellow dust rose round him, beckoning and shouting in three languages to the fire engines ranged around the building. Singapore had had its heroes.